Konjiam Resort

Konjiam is the most convenient hill in the immediate vicinity of Seoul, both in terms of access and also their flexible ticketing system. For the riding available I also rate it slightly better than its near neighbours Jisan Forest Resort and Yangji Pine Resort, and best in Gyeonggi-do province (along with Bears Town); for a quick half-day on the slopes near Seoul, Konjiam is the best option. This is my choice for a season pass for local riding when in Seoul for the season.

It’s the typical setup with a small ski area but a huge and highly developed base area with large hotel/condo buildings, excellent facilities and plenty of food and drink available, and attached golf course for the summer months.

The riding itself is essentially limited to one (pair of) main lift(s) to the top of the main hill (with a few more lifts going part way which do nothing in terms of opening up any terrain, but are pretty essential for the extra uplift capacity on busy weekends and holidays), plus a bunny slope to the side with its own lift. The lifts are fast and comfortable, as is standard in Korea. For intermediate riders and above, essentially you’re just going to be lapping the main lift, with a handful of available routes down; I find skier’s right the most satisfying among them, but you’ll likely have it all skied out in an hour.

The bunny slope

You can see the park here, just right-of-centre

There’s a small but reasonably decent park towards the bottom; it doesn’t have its own lift though, so you either have to hit it on your laps or session it by hiking the features (they have small and medium kickers, plus various boxes and rails).

Konjiam Resort is good for:

Ease of access. For those without vehicles, Konjiam has the easiest access of any ski resort from Seoul; you can reach Konjiam by free resort shuttle from Jamsil or Sadang, or take the Seoul Metro to Gonjiam Station and the shuttle bus from there (see below for details)

Lift tickets. The flexible ticketing system means you pay for a certain amount of time without being limited to pre-ordained start & finish times.

These two points make Konjiam by far the most convenient hill around Seoul.

The park is decent by the standards of Seoul area hills (though Jisan’s is better)

Open until 4am! (though I have no idea who goes there at such a time)

Konjiam Resort is not so good for:

Size. Although it is slightly larger than the other Seoul local hills Jisan Forest, Yangji Pine, and Star Hill, it’s still one of the smaller hills in a country of small hills.

Their English website is pretty useless (that’s where we come in!)

Konjiam Resort lift tickets

Konjiam gets top marks for selling tickets which start from the time you actually buy them, rather than for the rigid AM/PM/Evening time slots that most Korean resorts follow. As you can arrive at any time through the day using the train & shuttle bus, this makes Konjiam an attractive option. They also sell a wide range of ticket lengths, from 1-hour to full day (though the 1-hour and 2-hour tickets are very poor value; I’d get 4 hours to make it worthwhile). As usual in Korea there’s a snow grooming break, but it’s only for an hour at 6pm (rather than the 90-minute or 2-hour breaks at most resorts). You can check the rates on their website (not shown in summer months), and here’s a (not very clear – apologies) photo of their 2016/17 rates as shown at the ticket windows – the top box is weekdays, the middle box is weekends (bottom is rental). In the top rows, 시간 means ‘hours’. The 대인 and 소인 rows are ‘adult’ and ‘child’, respectively:

Konjiam: accommodation

If you do want to stay at Konjiam itself, accommodation is available at the base of the slopes in the Konjiam Resort Condo; you can book here

Airbnb is also a great choice for Seoul – hosts usually have it set up so you can arrive & check in by yourself without having to wait around or meet anyone, and the housing standards are decent with underfloor heating and excellent internet connections as standard. If you haven’t used Airbnb before, you can get a 35-dollar discount off your first rental by signing up through Snow Guide Korea; simply click on this link and register!

How to get to Konjiam

Konjiam is easily accessed by subway and/or shuttle bus. It can be reached on Seoul Metro’s Gyeonggang line; the stop is called Gonjiam, and the resort runs a regular free shuttle from there (roughly hourly from 9am to 8pm). This enables you to make your way to the hill throughout the day, taking anything from 45 minutes (from e.g. Gangnam) to 90 minutes (from e.g. Hongdae) to Gonjiam Station, depending where you start from, plus the 20-minute shuttle bus ride.

The schedule for this bus is here – the first & last columns show departure from & arrival at Konjiam; the fourth column shows Gonjiam Station (곤지암전철역)

They also run free shuttles direct from Sadang and Jamsil, schedules here. All in Korean again; Jamsil is 잠실, Sadang is 사당, Konjiam Resort is 곤지암리조트; also 역 means ‘station’, 출발 is ‘depart’, and 도착 is ‘arrive’.

The customer service desk has English-speaking staff and all the bus schedules, but information for the return buses is also displayed at the bus stop. Handily, a ‘for foreigner’ number is provided:

The resort shuttles obviously work out cheaper than using the Metro to Gonjiam, and will likely also be faster (unless you’re based somewhere southeast of Gangnam / Jamsil). This author’s preferred route is the shuttle bus from Sadang.

The pickup spot at Sadang might not be immediately obvious if you’re unfamiliar with Seoul; when you come out of exit 1, walk straight for 50m past the bus stop:

The bus pulls in at the parking area just after this bus stop, and you want to wait in this spot:

There’s usually a bunch of people waiting so it should be obvious once you see them.

At Jamsil Station the pickup spot is the taxi stand in front of Lotte World just outside Jamsil Station exit 4.

Konjiam has the usual large and well-catered base area facilities, here’s the main cafeteria:

Any questions about Konjiam Resort? Leave a comment below!

For more Seoul area ski resorts, see here; for full reviews of every Korean ski resort, see here

36 comments on “Konjiam Resort”

Hi again Jeb, it looks like Konjiam’s opening in the 1st week of December, so if you want to ski on the 30th in the Seoul area you should go to Jisan Forest Resort (or alternatively head over to one of the resorts in Gangwon-do)

Sorry, I’m not sure; it might be open by then, it might not. Konjiam usually opens around that time – their opening date last year was December 2nd. This year’s opening date still hasn’t been announced I’m afraid, but as soon as it is I’ll post an update.

Yes no problem, you can visit any Korean ski resort without paying entrance fees.

One thing though – at Konjiam there are ticket barriers between the public area and the snow, so you wouldn’t be able to actually walk onto the snow without tickets. If you want to play around on the snow a bit, take pics etc, it would be better to go to Jisan Forest Resort as there are no barriers there. (Konjiam is easier to get to though)

Hi Irene, their shuttle bus schedules still haven’t been announced, so I can’t tell you yet if there will be a direct shuttle from the airports. But if there isn’t, it’s very easy to get from the airports to central Seoul using the Airport Line (part of the city subway system), and then take a shuttle bus.

I’ll keep checking for the bus schedule, and once they announce it I’ll post you an update here so try checking back to this page every couple days. Until then, let me know if you have any more questions!

Hi, sorry, I’m not sure – the shuttle buses for this season haven’t been posted yet. But I expect that they will be in the next week or so, as Konjiam is opening in early December! So keep checking the link and the info should (hopefully) be there soon

Thanks for the link! Unfortunately, my husband had other ideas and booked the Goodstay Elf Spa near Phoenix Ski Resort instead.

Not sure if you know, but can I hail a taxi from Incheon airport to the Elf Spa? I messaged a tour company and they are charging me about 350,000 won, which seems extremely pricey! Am wondering whether it would be cheaper if I just get a taxi at the airport when I land (and whether it will be easy to find a taxi that will drive all the way there)?

Hi again Winnie, sorry for the slow response, I’ve had a couple of busy days travelling back to Korea. In Seoul now and excited to hit the slopes this week!

No worries, your husband made a sound choice – Phoenix Park is a good call. Definitely a better hill than Konjiam, and you can also check out the setup for the Olympics.

I’m afraid you’ve found a gap in my knowledge there though – I’m really not sure about how easy it would be to get a taxi straight to Phoenix from the airport, or how much it would cost. I’ll ask some Korean friends and get back to you.

If your trip is after December 22nd, you can take the new KTX (bullet train) – this would be both faster & cheaper than a taxi, though it would require a change of trains in Seoul (airport express to Seoul Station, then KTX from there to Pyeongchang Station)

Hi Winnie,
I’ve been to Phoenix resort twice and already stayed at the Elf Pension (old name if Elf Spa). Taking taxi from the Incheon airport is too expensive, and quite far. You can use public transportations which are very cheap and convenient.
1) From the airport, you can take a subway to Dongseoul bus terminal [2,150₩/person]
Direction: Incheon Int’l (A10) – transfer to line 2 at Hongik University (A03), and get off at Gangbyeon (214)

2) From Dongseoul Bus Terminal, take a bus to “JangPyeong” (12,000₩/person)

3) Get off the bus at JangPyong then take a taxi to Elf (16,000₩).

Between Elf to Phoenix, you can take a taxi (14,000₩/one-way) which you can ask the staff to call a taxi for you.

Note: Costs were for my trip last year, may be higher this year but probably a lot cheaper than taking a taxi from the airport to Elf. It’s quite far, though. The bus seats are wide, so I personally think it’s more comfortable than a taxi seat.

Hi Patt, thanks for sharing your info for the benefit of other readers!

Are you going to visit Elf Spa again in future? For next time, you can take the new KTX train to Pyeongchang Station instead of the bus to Jangpyeong, it’s much faster! (and only slightly more expensive)

Apologies, I just realised I never got back to you about that taxi quote – Korean friends have advised me that they’d expect to pay at least 300000 won from Incheon Airport to Phoenix Park by direct taxi, so your quote of 350000 doesn’t seem too bad but perhaps you could try to negotaiate them down a little.

Also see the above reply to you from Patt – the information given is correct for doing the journey by bus, but since the new KTX train opened a couple of weeks ago it’s now much faster & easier to do it by train than by bus. To do so, you’d take the KTX to Pyeongchang Station, then a taxi from there to your accommodation.

Is there a full set of equipment for hiring at Konjiam (ie: ski, boots, poles, clothes, goggle, gloves, benie)? Furthermore, since this place is close to Seoul, will there be a lot of people and take a long time to wait for the lift?

It does get crowded on weekends and holidays, but weekdays aren’t bad. Also the lift system is amazingly good for such a small hill, so even when it’s busy the lines aren’t as bad as you see at e.g. Christmas at famous resorts in Europe. Still, I personally avoid weekends and only go midweek.

I recommend that you go to Vivaldi Park instead, as it’s easy to get to and you can walk around on the snow without buying tickets, and there’s an underground shopping mall if you get too cold outside.

Hi Kathy, do you mean 3 full days staying in resort? or doing day trips from Seoul?

If you want to stay in resort, the best one near(ish) Seoul is Welli Hilli Park – however I think they’re totally booked out in February what with the Olympics at the other main resorts, so Vivaldi Park probably would be the best bet.

If you intend to stay in Seoul and ski locally, then yes I definitely recommend Konjiam as it has the best access, and Elysian Gangchon’s also easy to reach. If you stay in Seoul you could hit Elysian, Konjiam, and Vivaldi for 1 day each.

Hi Maude, I’m not aware of any military discounts, at Konjiam or elsewhere. I thought the US Forces in-house travel agency could arrange trips though? (presumably including any discount)

You can get 30 or 40 percent foreigner discounts at some resorts though (not related to the military), you just need to take your passports. 30% at Vivaldi Park, 40% at High1, and there’s a 40% discount at Yongpyong if you get a resort card (they didn’t ask for my passport, don’t think it’s necessary but take it just in case!)

Hi Jason, yes it will be over 100 dollars. On a weekday it’s 58000 won for 4 hours, plus the gear rental & clothing rental will be around 60000 won total (it varies depending on what exactly you rent). So it’ll be 100 to 120 dollars, plus an extra 10 dollars if you go at the weekend (but don’t go at the weekend – super crowded!)

Hello, I’ll be going skiing in Konjiam Ski World next weekend but still need to get a place to stay. Do you have the Konjiam Shuttle Bus Route and Schedule that you can send me? Are any of Hotel Cullinan Yongin, Yongin Central CO’OP, Gangnam Family Hotel, Q Hotel Yongin or Ramada Yongin near the Ski World or on the shuttle bus route?

The shuttle buses don’t stop in Yongin at all – they run directly from Seoul (Sadang and Jamsil) to the resort. There may very well be local public buses from Yongin to somewhere near Konjiam (perhaps to Gonjiam Station, from where you could take the local resort shuttle), but I don’t know for sure and it would be pretty time-consuming. I don’t really advise staying in Yongin in order to ski at Konjiam – although it looks quite close on the map, Yongin is on the wrong side of the hills and the road route from Yongin to Konjiam is quite a long way around. It would be better to stay in Seoul (or at Konjiam itself).